So true. About 20 years ago I took my then wife to Louisiana (Lake Bruin, Breaux Bridge, Grand Isle and New Orleans). When we first crossed the border into LA she remarked that she was surprised to find it was just as flat as her home state of North Dakota.

Thos are some cool freaking dogs! I’m a big believer that everything that lives at the house has a job. The cats are for rodent and reptile defense, The dog is for protection among other things. Those dogs definitely fit the bill.

I’ve been breed shopping for when my wife’s dumbass scottie finally keels over. My wife wants a sheepdog and I want an aussie. I’m not much of a dog person, but that may be because both of my wife’s dogs were dumb ankle biters. I want a dog that is smarter than the cats.

My daughter and her family picked up a Blue Heeler about a year and a half ago {Australian Cattle Dog (Blue/Red Heeler)}. Wonderful dog, but extremely energetic. She could run with the dog when it was a puppy. But I had to buy her a Bike Tow Leash so that she could ride a bike and keep up with the dog. This is a daily effort, year round, including winter in Iowa.

great family pets as well. They are patient with kids and they do not overreact. They are better at recognizing and only responding to true threats than any other dog I have encountered. They are also really cuddly, if overly so sometimes (lint removers are a requirement)

“They will hear and bark loudly at threats whether they exist or not.”

kinnath
on July 12, 2018 at 12:12 pm

Our shelties to an amazing job of driving away the ghosts that live in the neighborhood.

Gadianton
on July 12, 2018 at 1:07 pm

We had an Alaskan Malamute like that. Sweetest dog you could ever want, but after the third throw of the stick, she’d either just keep running, or look at you like “I’ve brought it back twice. You go get it.

Ha-ha. That sounds like Steele, my Lab/Greyhound mix. He loved to run, but on his terms and for no specific reason. Fetch was not happening.

Tundra
on July 12, 2018 at 1:10 pm

Lol. My GSD was the same way. “Look asshole, I just brought it back three fucking times. I’ll be over here in the shade – WITH THE DAMN FRISBEE – until you get your shit together!!”

God, I miss her…

kinnath
on July 12, 2018 at 1:11 pm

We had a sheltie puppy that we would fetch with in the house. I would roll a tennis ball on the floor, and the dog would chase it; catch it; and bring it back. After about a week he figured out he could stand still and wait for the ball to hit a wall and come back to him. Too fucking smart.

Rasilio
on July 12, 2018 at 2:16 pm

Yeah our pyr would look at you like you had 3 heads on the first throw of the stick. Hand her a dog toy and she’d just look at it and then back at you as if to say “what do you want me to do with that?”

R C Dean
on July 12, 2018 at 2:20 pm

The Dean Beasts don’t really “do” fetch. If you throw something (anything) they will run it down, grab it, shake it hard enough to snap a piece of rebar in half, and when it doesn’t struggle, they lose interest and wander off.

A friend of mine had two. He brought the bigger one to PetCo a few times, but he’d get overwhelmed and then just drop like a sack of potatoes in the middle of the aisle. My friend would have to carry him back through the store, stick him in the car, and then check out. The image of dude lugging this 100+ pound white fluffball through the store like the world’s biggest baby kind of sold me on the breed, honestly.

Fun fact- the Pyrenees used for actual sheep dogs are, as puppies, wrapped in a skin suit from a freshly killed lamb, then introduced to the herd. The sheep are stupid enough to think (smell) that the dog is a sheep, and the dog thinks the herd is its fam.

My former pyrennes “Maggie” was around 130 lbs in her prime, and lasted about 11 years.

I’ve got one that reminds me of the muscular street cats from Tom and Jerry. Most cats naturally sit/stand with their front paws touching one another. He has a 2″ gap between them because his muscles get in the way.

Anyway. Once I get him trained on the Mk.4 directed energy array, I think we’ll even be safe from all of your reptilian client species. As much as we respect the muppet/lizardpeople alliance, the client species are never quite so fidelitous.

We’ve got a mini-Aussie. The brains are spot on. But also sheds quite a bit, particularly seasonal, and need lots of interaction and exercise. Very job oriented, if you don’t channel it, they will find a job for themselves.

My boss just got an aussiedoodle. The pic he showed me was adorable, and there was a bit of a shaggy look to it like an English sheepdog. He said the poodle half knocks down the worst of the need for attention.

Aussies are very high energy and can be pretty destructive if they don’t have a lot of room to run and preferably a herd of something to look after.

Pater Dean has a miniature Aussie that he dotes on. Sweetest, gentlest little dog, and smart as a whip.

If you’ve got the inclination for a pit breed, I can strongly recommend British Staffordshire Terriers/Staffordshire Bull Terriers. They run under 50 pounds and have the classic pit temperament – stubborn, goofy, companionable, not the brightest, but who cares. Generally, exactly what you would expect from a dog that is half terrier, half bulldog.

I had an Aussie. Smartest damn dog. We were at my in-laws house for a wedding reception. They didn’t want to keep her locked up indoors during the party, so we rigged up an outdoor cage. She figured out how to build a ladder with her toys and bedding and climbed out. She then proceeded to herd all the kids at the reception.

Herding dogs are great, but they can be a bitch to own. Really fucking smart can be way more challenging than stupid. I currently have a Polish Lowland Sheepdog and raised a GSD before him. Note that most herding dogs are quite protective and will often be pretty aloof with anyone not in the primary pack.

It was the most socially aware animal I’ve ever witnessed, and more socially aware than most people. With a high drive to please, she was pretty much self-training. We got her from the shelter, and her previous owner must not have let her into the house. We brought her into the house in her crate since she wouldn’t walk in. She stayed in her crate. I had to pee, so I went to a nearby bathroom, but didn’t close the door. She also needed to pee apparently, since after I finished, she went into the bathroom and peed on the toilet.

The cowboys in Texas often have a sideline in feral hog harvesting. Packs of dogs (I’ve catahoulas, also pits, anything with adamantium balls, really) run down the hog, and, yes, the cowboys kill it with a knife. They use knives because gunshots will spook the rest of the pack(?) of hogs. When one is done, the dogs take off after the next one. The cowboys generally use 4 wheelers, on account of horses being too smart to want to be involved in this kind of mess.

I’ve had a few encounters with feral hogs, and walking up on a 200+ pounder with nothing but a knife in your hand takes more stones than I bring to the party.

You’ve got some good lookin’ dogs there. It’s funny, one of my dog’s is named Jack, and if your only experience with American Staffordshire Terriers was him, you’d assume they were bred to lay on couches and fart themselves unconscious.

Speaking of staffies and pits and so forth, I noticed that the Catahoulas do the molosser bit where they grab a hold of something and just hold on until you tell them to let go. Jack does that; Carmen not so much, but she’s a Rhodie-Pit-God-knows-what mix, kind of more of a big courser.

I almost adopted one from the pound. I’m so glad now that it didn’t work out. I took it to a nearby park to try it for a walk. Darn thing slipped it’s leash & took off. Finally managed to get it back on and back to the kennel. I think I would have needed 12 foot fences on the yard to keep it in.

Carmen’s wasted as an urban lounge dog. When we take her out camping or to the park or out to the in-laws land in Texas she hauls ass in a 1/4 mile radius, periodically looping back to jump over Jack. I’ve seen her catch mourning doves on the wing that got spooked in nearby bushes. In a different place and time she could’ve made a fortune getting rid of rabbits for farmers.

I don’t, but I’ll reiterate the standard advice: stick to traditional pets unless you have professional experience as an animal trainer. I’ve heard that domesticated foxes are adorable and nice and all that, but even domesticated they’re difficult to live with. Kind of like the deal with pet monkeys.

I had a pet racoon growing up. Our dog killed its mother so we raised it ourselves. It was wicked smart.
I also had a pet sheep named Bambi. Her mother died giving birth to her. She had a doggie bed near the wood stove until she was about a year old.

My friend and his brother found a fawn once, and what was left of its mother. They decided that they would feed and take care of it as a psuedo-pet. Critically, they never told their father, assuming that he wouldn’t approve.

A few months later during hunting season, their dad went out and found the deer, and was amazed at how it stood there and gave him the perfect shot. Their dad did not tell anyone about where he found the deer, what it looked like, our how it acted, until after dinner. Many valuable lessons about the importance of prompt communication were learned that night.

I’ve heard the thing about skunks is that, like with ferrets, removing the glands basically makes them stink less, not stink-free. Like you’re never going to be able to conceal the fact that you have a pet skunk, glands or no.

“[You can be] sitting there drinking your cup of coffee and turning your head for a second, and then taking a swig and realizing, ‘Yeah, Boris came up here and peed in my coffee cup,’” said Amy Bassett, the Canid Conservation Center’s founder. “You can easily train and manage behavioral problems in dogs, but there are a lot of behaviors in foxes, regardless of if they’re Russian or U.S., that you will never be able to manage.”

When I adopted my cats years and years ago one of my idiot roommates was convinced they loved it when he picked them up, despite all evidence to the contrary. Invariably, the next morning, he’d put on his motorcycle helmet and smell cat piss.

If you don’t have basic pet care experience, you may want to stay away from the exotics for a while. They require a lot more upkeep and care, and can do a lot more damage. I knew someone who ran an exotic pet store, then an exotic pet show, then an exotic pet rescue. Few things are as terrifying as being woken up the morning after drinking heavily due to a a two and a half foot long iguana perched on your head.

I’ve only had one doggo in my life. We got a puppy black lab when I was 13 or 14. We could only keep her for a few years before we realized we had to give her up. I’m still exhausted just thinking about how much work she was.

She was like the elves from diskworld. Beautiful, stupid as a bag of hammers, and destruction incarnate. We used to chain her up in the back yard, and she would sprint after anything she saw, the chain would pull taught, and she’d choke herself and fall down. She’d stand back up, look in a different direction, and sprint after that. Over, and over, and over for hours. When we would take her on a walk on a leash, there was about a 1 in 4 chance of getting dragged if you didn’t pay serious attention to what she was doing. I don’t think she ever took a shit in her life that didn’t have some string, leather or fabric in it from something she managed to find and eat that she shouldn’t have.

I don’t miss her, but I hope she found a better life. We gave her to a potato farmer that let her roam the property hunting vermim that like to burrow and eat his potatoes.

My BIL got a black lab. He’s been told there are two kinds of labs; one is lab-stupid and a bundle of energy until it hits about 3 or 4, at which age it calms down, and the other lives its entire life as a 70 pound puppy until it dies of old age or chokes on a tennis ball. I always used to talk smack about little dogs, but if you basically just want a furry companion to sit on the couch with you while you watch tv and maybe follow you around the yard while you pull weeds, do yourself a favor and get a pug or something.

My parents had a cairn terrier Mollie. Little dog, but one of the best. Had a great disposition, and had no difficulty with any of the fallen trees or other obstacles on the trails the mountain bikers set up. Quite a few years after she died, I was walking another dog out on those trails, and one of the bikers remembered Mollie.

The archives of our former sister site Gawker now belong to this goon. Bryan Goldberg, the founder of Bleacher Report, a sports site for idiots, and Bustle, the women’s site that assumes women are stupid, won the rights to the defunct Gawker.com in a bankruptcy auction today, as reported by the Wall Street Journal.

It’s not clear why Goldberg, who received a lot of media coverage after he chose to found a women’s interest site for the most cynical, self-centered reasons, would want to own Gawker and the ability to delete anything written on it. Perhaps it was this post which admired how precisely brutal that New Yorker profile was about him—“With his puffy face and untrimmed hair, he resembles a giant six-year-old,”—or this article, with the headline “Who Gave This Asshole $6.5 Million to Launch a Bro-Tastic Lady Site?” Maybe it was one of these blogs that irked Bryan so much that he decided wanted to spend (a reported) $1.35 million on the site that wrote it. If he doesn’t cremate Gawker’s corpse, but instead tries to revive it, it’s a sure thing that the result will be substantially dumber than the original thing.

The heirs of Gawker seem rather disappointed with the outcome of the bankruptcy auction. Pissy, even.

Chicago, IL – A moderately talented writer for an internet publication was stunned to discover that his job is being eliminated just months after he helped his shop unionize. “This is a matter of Justice!” said the local idiot. “The paymasters are just going on the offensive, shutting down and going out of business just because we drove the cost of labor up to unsustainable levels. I mean, where are you going to find a twenty-something, college-educated writer willing to make jokes about popular culture? We have rare and unique skills, and we should be compensated as such.”

Why are these people being so mean to me just because I was being mean to them!! There’s nothing I could have done to avoid this!!

Why are they entering such a large judgement against me just because I committed a tort and acted like a douche canoe over and over again!! There’s nothing I could have done to avoid this!! Its a first amendment problem!! The government is shutting down the free press!! Just because we did illegal stuff and a jury found us liable!!

Lord, make me love my neighbor and take glee in his pain. But not yet.

I just realized there’s a certain phrase that has become wildly popular, and i’ve never been sure why…

which is the “So what you’re saying is, [horrible paraphrase/strawman of interlocutor]”-thing

iow, people have this habit of taking something you say, and going, “Here’s my simplified interpretation”, rather than carefully examining the specifics of what you said. (because surely you didn’t say things in *precisely that way* for a specific reason?)

Not a bad thing, necessarily, by itself, if done in good faith, in attempt to clarify an argument. But its just something i see being done constantly, everywhere. And there’s 1 thing about it that rubs me the wrong way, and a second thing about it which i just realized.

#1 – annoying thing: is that it is always reducing complex opinions to ‘bone-stupid absolutes’, where the only views are “pro” or “con”, and anything in-between MUST be shoved into one or the other.

the famous example being Bastiat: “very time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. “

#2 is more-concerning, in the long run, which is: a new ‘unwillingness to ask questions’

instead of accepting that person A might possess some formulation you don’t understand, you simply keep taking what they say, and compare it to one of a selection of “stock ideas” you already possess. When it fails to line up with them? You blame them for being ‘incoherent’, rather than yourself for failing to listen

What i see is people rigidly clinging to cultivated, solipsistic points of view, and only going through the motions of ‘discussion’. Its sort of as though, ‘i already possess all information necessary to draw conclusions on X’ is the de facto posture of EVERYONE… which is a bizarre and absurd thing.

think of the 100s of antifa types who spew claims about “capitalism”, for instance…

…when the likelihood is that they’re some high-schooler whose concept of what ‘capitalism’ even is is completely free of anything so complicating as “economic history” or “the most basic understanding of finance” or “ever having read a single economic book in their life”

take that sort of hubris, and then apply it to everyone, about everything.

I just realized there’s a certain phrase that has become wildly popular, and i’ve never been sure why…

I think its because of the famous interview between Jordan Peterson and some bint who used that phrase relentlessly and ineffectively to try to mischaracterize him as some kind of bigoted alt-righter. He didn’t fall for it and made her look a fool.

I see commenters here using the phrase to snarkmock by wildly misstating a previous comment, and I assumed it was because of that interview.

I think using it the way that Cathy chick did with Jordan Peterson is common for two reasons:

1. Promoting re-phrasing as part of active listening
2. People are really, really dumb so if your statement has any nuance or complication or reference to anything they don’t understand it shortcircuits them and they aren’t capable or willing to say, “wait, explain that again, because I am a retard.”.

1. Promoting re-phrasing as part of active listening
2. People are really, really dumb

Yes.

the former had occurred to me. its actually popular now, because people (either in HS or college) are actually being trained to do this as a rhetorical method – probably ostensibly because the teachers think its (as you say) ‘more engaged’ and active… rather than passive, merely-inquisitive, giving the person you’re questioning the liberty to phrase things their own way.

the latter also occurred to me: people on social media are extremely dumb, and its a very effective way of simply reducing every smart person down to their level,

e.g.

Libertarian: [complex explanation of minarchist view, which concedes existence of the state but wants to keep it strictly limited in many regards]

There are at least two things someone could be doing when using “What you’re saying is…”:

1. Trying to rephrase what the other person was saying, as you said. This could be done well or poorly, in bad faith or not. It could be a strawman.

2. Drawing a purported implication of what the other person was saying. Here there isn’t an attempt to say the SAME THING in different words (or even strawman the particular claim of the opponent), but basically say “You believe X; X entails Y; so you’re also saying Y.” This may be an attempt at a reductio ad absurdum. It could be another attempt to strawman or something. The implication might not hold. There is a difference between believing X and believing anything implied by X.

I agree it’s easy to be strawmanning when doing this, but it CAN be a valid form of argument. If you know the opponent believes X and disbelieves Y, drawing an inference from X to Y will help refute the opponent.

It is a rhetorical technique I use occasionally when attempting to illustrate for someone an inevitable conclusion of their belief. Not because I think they believe that thing but because I am trying to show them that the then is a necessary consequence of their belief that they have not though through.

Example;
Proggie: “I believe that increasing teachers pay will improve the quality of education”
Me: “So you’re saying teachers are on average either evil or incompetent”
Proggie: “what? I never said any such thing!”
Me: ” There are only 2 mechanisms by which raising teacher pay will improve educational outcomes. Either by attracting higher quality individuals with better skills to become teachers or if we assume that teachers are intentionally withholding education from the students because they are unhappy with their pay. If it is the first then teachers must on average be incompetent, if the second then they must be evil.”
Proggie: “Go to hell fascist”

That said I think the majority of people who use this technique, especially those who use it often might think they are using it the way I am above but they never bother to check of their “restatement” is logically following from what the other person said because more often then not they have no idea what the other person said but rather what they want to believe they said and it is this that they restate.

if you take your own example, and just skip the whole “So you’re saying” part, and instead jump to the “There are only 2 mechanisms by which”

… you actually make the exact same point, sans sneering.

iow, the only point of adding the “rephrasing” is to mock the person, when there’s actually little reason to; their statement, while maybe naive, obviously is well-intentioned.

If the idea is to provide people with ‘more insight into how incentives work’, spitting on their generous-but-simplistic views generally isn’t the ideal approach. Its also one of a handful of ‘common libertarian tics*’ which gives libertarianism a bad rep in certain circles.

*the other one i see a lot is libertarians, “turning every technical question of practical politics or technical-legal-issues into a philosophy debate”;
e.g.

Sorry, your response is not a valid form of argument. In fact, it’s a perfect example of reducing an issue to a “bone-stupid absolute.” Would you be surprised that a higher pay led to better work effort in the private sector? It can have the same effect in state-run schools. Sure, an argument can be made why it will be not as strong in the public sector but that argument must be more nuanced than yours.

Additionally, when done in good faith it allows you make sure you understand your opponent’s position — which means that you are actually responding to their arguments, rather than the voices in your head.

The majority of it in major media (and probably lesser media as as well) is done in bad faith.

The general intent is to take a competitive argument and reframe it as an anathema to the targeted audience. It’s not about careful consideration, it’s only about reassuring the sheep in the flock that they are in the correct flock, that they have chosen well.

Typically, this is done in a non-argumentative setting, where the critic is insulated from the original arguer. This may be complete isolation as in a commentary situation, or it may be in a captive setting, such as Hannity where the original arguer is shouted down or pelted with non sequitur questions such as “Do you love America, yes or no?”

In the Peterson case, it was refreshing to see an actual debate where the interviewer, although annoying as hell, actually had to deal with Peterson’s counter-arguments. On most US interview shows, that would not have happened.

Rott(en)weilors. Not the brightest, very loyal/protective (not to the point of aggressive), moderate exercise
English Mastiff. Not the brightest, gentle, loyal/protective ( same as rott) , prefers couch to exercise
Kuvasz. very bright, loyal/protective (needs socializing. the more people and bigger area the better), moderate exercise
All great with kids they know. strange kids? mastiff JDGAF, rotts warm but wary at first, kuvasz depends on the socializing

Speaking of Hungarian dogs, you should see the Komondor. My parents had a Komondor mix (it was mostly black instead of all white), but unfortunately the dog was very sick as a puppy, suffered brain damage as a result, and was literally the stupidest dog you’d ever meet. Very friendly, however, except for my 6’8″ BIL who never did anything to the dog.

Mollie mentioned above would try to chew on the Komondor’s ears and he wouldn’t swat her even though he could have hurt her badly had he wanted.

Considered a Kom, but was thinking that taking care of the dreads would be time intensive.. My kuvasz (brewser) basically tolerated kids, i’d make a show of holding the kid and introducing the two hoping brewser would figure part of the herd.
Great dog overall, just a bit leery of strangers.

I haven’t had a dog or any other animal around since I was in high school.
I’m already responsible for two kids. Don’t really want to be responsible for any additional life forms, even if they are fun sometimes.